Interested in holding a food drive to help enhance our work of providing food for over 25,000 visits every year? Read this first!

The Franklin Food Bank serves the food needs of our local community in an atmosphere of dignity and respect. For nearly 50 years we have been doing the hard and heart work of providing food assistance to an ever-growing community of families at a vulnerable time. Through collaboration with strategic partners and innovative programming, the Franklin Food Bank continues to make an incredible impact that will lead to long-lasting food security and self-sufficiency for our neighbors.

Over 50% of the food gathered by the Franklin Food Bank is recovered from retailers or purchased. 45% of our food comes from government programming. Approximately 3% of our food is collected from community drives. 

Triple Your Impact – Donate Funds Instead of Food

We are primarily encouraging the community to help us this year through our Virtual Food Drive program. According to Feeding America, donating funds instead of food makes far more of an impact on food banks because: 

• Donations can be turned into MORE meals than food
• Donations build healthier communities. Cold food is healthy food: food drives tend to gather dry staples (which we get from the US government already) when food banks could use funding instead to focus on gathering fresh healthy perishable foods like fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and dairy products
• Funds are used to combat food waste – we recover food from over 20 retailers, performing over 40 pickups every week! In fact, community food donations make up less than 5% of the food we receive and distribute to our neighbors
• Not all food banks have the capacity for receiving large food drives – food drives need to be sorted, checked for expiration dates, and ultimately organized onto our shelves with limited staff and volunteers

Source: Feeding America, Olivia Thoelke